Lecture
An artistic image is a picture of life created with the help of invention and possessing aesthetic significance. A reader or viewer, in perceiving art, must experience catharsis – spiritual purification, relief. If the viewer does not experience catharsis, then the work does not meet the criteria of artistry, since it does not affect, through its emotional power, the one who perceives it. Having experienced purification through empathy, a person begins to experience beautiful feelings and a desire to become better. The artist reproduces life in the form of life itself, vividly, concretely, figuratively appealing to the imagination and to the feeling of the reader, viewer, listener. In art, the generalization of experience occurs through concretization. An artistic image always generalizes, but from concrete positions, by way of individualization and concretization. An image is a concrete and at the same time generalized picture of human life, created with the help of invention and possessing aesthetic significance. A constituent part of a cinematic image is the concrete depiction that visually conveys inner content. In art, the only possible form of reflecting reality is the artistic image. An image is a direct reflection of the world. The human psyche is capable of re-creating it. An artistic image is not identical to reality. In art there is always invention. Using invention, the artist creates his own reality, but relies on the concreteness of life. An artistic image is always polysemous. The multiplicity of interpretations depends on knowledge, experience, context, and history. The result (product) of artistic creativity is the artistic work. It embodies, in sensory-material form, the spiritual-substantive conception of the artist and is the principal repository and source of information in the sphere of artistic culture. At the base of an artistic image there always lies some picture. There are a great many devices by means of which an image is created. The simplest form of creating an image is comparison. It arises when one thing is compared to another. An association arises – an image arises. It is always subjective, because it is created from a person's point of view. The function of art is cognition. Another function is evaluative. Reality is reflected – the modeling function. The sign function. The communicative function. These functions make art art as such.
ARTISTIC IMAGE – a generalized artistic reflection of reality in a concrete form, a picture of human life (or a fragment of such a picture) created with the help of the artist's creative imagination and in the light of his aesthetic ideal. The artistic image helps not only to reproduce this or that phenomenon of reality, but also to express its essence. It is dual in nature: on the one hand, it represents the product of an utterly individualized artistic description, while on the other — it possesses the functionality of a symbol and carries within it a generalizing principle. The artistic image is created by means of typification, generalization, and invention (convention), and has independent aesthetic significance. The artistic image: 1. Reflects and generalizes essential properties and features of reality, a person's conceptions of the world, and reveals the complexities of people's spiritual life. 2. Expresses an emotional attitude toward what serves as the object of creativity. 3. Embodies the ideal, the perfect, the beauty of life and of nature, and creates an aesthetically significant world of objects. 4. Has an inner orientation toward the perception of the reader, viewer, listener. In literature the artistic image is generated by the word. Any word necessarily generates a concept. In literature, however, words become signals for the creation of imagery.
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